Alas, he was met for his pains with a salvo of abuse. The 10-year-olds shrieked at the noble lord, who has been married since 1968 and who has three children. They called him a “pervert, a poofter and a paedo”.

I wish that people would get it through their heads that kids aren’t idiots.

(That’s hardly the only lesson they’ve learned:

He asked a passer-by to call the police, saying to the child: “If you think you can behave like this, you are dead wrong.” To which, the boy replied, with a chilling grasp of the changed relationship between children and adults: “I am going to have you for holding me.”

And when the police arrived, whose side do you think they were on? They didn’t even tick off the boys, but warned Lord Phillips that he was wrong to try to exercise any authority himself. )